e
security of their own native subjects and citizens. The sovereignty of
the state is concerned in maintaining its exclusive jurisdiction and
possession over its merchant-ships on the seas, except so far as the law
of nations justifies intrusion upon that possession for special
purposes; and all experience has shown, that no member of a crew,
wherever born, is safe against impressment when a ship is visited.

The evils and injuries resulting from the actual practice can hardly be
overstated, and have ever proved themselves to be such as should lead to
its relinquishment, even if it were founded in any defensible principle.
The difficulty of discriminating between English subjects and American
citizens has always been found to be great, even when an honest purpose
of discrimination has existed. But the lieutenant of a man-of-war,
having necessity for men, is apt to be a summary judge, and his
decisions will be quite as significant of his own wants and his own
power as of the truth and justice of the case. An extract from a letter
of Mr. King, of the 13th of April, 1797, to the American Secretary of
State, shows something of the enormous extent of these wrongful
seizures.

"Instead of a few, and these in many instances equivocal cases, I have,"
says he, "since the month of July past, made application for the
discharge from British men-of-war of two hundred and seventy-one seamen,
who, stating themselves to be Americans, have claimed my interference.
Of this number, eighty-six have been ordered by the Admiralty to be
discharged, thirty-seven more have been detained as British subjects or
as American volunteers, or for want of proof that they are Americans,
and to my applications for the discharge of the remaining one hundred
and forty-eight I have received no answer; the ships on board of which
these seamen were detained having, in many instances, sailed before an
examination was made in consequence of my application.

"It is certain that some of those who have applied to me are not
American citizens, but the exceptions are, in my opinion, few, and the
evidence, exclusive of certificates, has been such as, in most cases,
to satisfy me that the applicants were real Americans, who have been
forced into the British service, and who, with singular constancy, have
generally persevered in refusing pay or bounty, though in some instances
they have been in service more than two years."

But the injuries of impressment are by n